Maite Mola calls for a human rights campaign in Europe

Maite Mola calls for a human rights campaign in Europe

22 Juillet 2017

The Summer University of the Party of the European Left (EL), taking place in Budapest, began its second day of work talking about human rights in the host country, Hungary. In fact, the loss of the rights, the reverse of the democracy, the populism of right and the advance of authoritarianism, with special attention to Eastern and Central Europe, were the axes that marked the debates of the day.There were also several seminars to discuss the situation of women in Central and Eastern Europe, the defense of public services and the struggle for the right to health and universal education, guaranteed, public and of high-quality. They presented a European campaign against human trafficking and shared strategies on how to use social networks to break the agenda of the mass media and draw our own to disseminate the alternatives of the Party of the European Left (EL) that is not being distributed in the major media companies.In the morning plenary, dedicated to the situation in Hungary, they spoke about the European Union investigation on the lack of rights and democracy in Hungary. The Vice President of the Party of the European Left, Maite Mola, criticized the double standards in which the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, treats the offensive to overthrow the democratic regime of Venezuela meanwhile she looks for another side, in the repression and increasing authoritarianism exerted by Erdongan in Turkey and, in different measure, by Orban in Hungary, dealing with them. In this sense, she expressed her desire that the Party of the European Left carries on a general campaign of human rights in Europe and, in particular, about the situation of human rights in Hungary."In the left, we can work with the social-democrats, but not with the social-liberal. The difference is not in the title but in the content" explained Maite Mola.In the afternoon the plenary was focused on the rise of the right and authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe. Olesya Orlenki, of Friends of L'Humanité, spoke on how this ascent had taken place in Russia, pointing at the conjunction of different elements, which begin for the discredit of the left, with a consensus of the opposition to identify it with the antidemocratic ideas and totalitarianism. That is complemented with the great economic and industrial crisis; the growth of religious sentiment, which replaces the lack of ideology; and the rise of nationalism and electoral use made by the parties to capture votes.The Hungarian philosopher Gáspár Tamás Miklós, focused on a few key ideas. "There are several types of fascism, but everyone always tries to replace the class conflict with another kind of dilemmas, such as the race and the nation". It is necessary to wonder against whom the fascism is directed, he said, giving the answer: "against the communists that are who represent the interests of the workpeople in the whole world”.He also pointed how the far right forces are able to mobilize a majority in favour of the minority, and how they use the division and conflict, through the spirit of the race and the crisis of immigrants. And, among other things, he quipped about the madness of celebrating the victory of neo-liberalism of Macron as a victory against the far right.The Hungarian philosopher concluded with an optimistic recipe: remembering Lenin and his newspaper Iskra, sentenced: "spark will became the flame". To do so, he clarified, it is necessary to put together three elements: faith in the idea that victory is possible; pride of our ideas, and consciousness of who our enemies are, he said.Dagma Svendova, from Breclav, the Foundation from Czech Republic that works in Transform exposed a detailed study of who represents the far right in different countries of Central and Eastern Europe and how the decline of democracy is accompanied by a more and more increasingly intolerant speech. She finished her participation with a proposal of action from the left: to identify the enemy and its way of operating, establish a common strategy and counteracting its influence.